East Village to Get Another Ugly Building, at Astor Place

February 28, 2011

The Wall Street Journal reports today that 51 Astor Place, the site of Cooper Union’s old engineering building, is once again in the works as the site of developer Edward Minskoff’s fancy-shmancy new Fumihiko Maki-designed “13-story ribbed granite-and-glass office building,” which had been postponed during that whole recession thing. Now that that’s (sort of?) over, Minskoff says he’s moving forward with the building again, which he predicts will attract residents like high-tech companies, i-banks, insurance companies, and ad agencies to our fine neighborhood by 2013. It’s a perfect pairing for the new, ever-uglier Bowery Hotel! Construction is slated to start in July. [via Curbed]